Do you feel dizzy trying to keep up with the magical travel times, strained plot devices, and breakneck pace of “Eastwatch”? Were you willing to overlook all because you can’t wait to see how the “seven samurai” would take on the dead?

Catch your breath with three fans with different perspectives: Rosalyn Claret, who has read the books she “forgets” how many times; Laura Fletcher, a casual fan of the television and book series; and Cheryl Collins, who does not read.

Join the conversation in comments!

Cheryl
Should we plunge right into this discordant, oddly paced, hodge-podge of an episode?

We start with Jaime’s amazing save on the field of battle. What was your take on his being plucked out of the water by Bronn and the events afterward, including the incineration of the two Tarlys?

Laura
It’s interesting that they immediately tied up with a neat bow what happened to Jaime. His fate was not in question for more than the week between episodes: it was the very last scene and the very first scene. And to me that just seems really emblematic of how the entire season is going — we’re going to give you the tiniest itty-bitty cliffhanger — but just kidding! Bronn saved him! Because Bronn needs his money! Moving on.

It was kind of consistent with Bronn, but I’m not sure I believed that Bronn did it just for self-interest.

Right after that scene were shots of Tyrion wandering around the battlefield. He seems very struck by the battle and all the ash, which is different from all the other battle aftermath scenes we’ve seen.

Cheryl
It felt like nuclear winter, with all that ash. There’s no life at all. Not only were the men dead but so were the horses, and the food was incinerated. They made sure we saw shots of all of those things.

Laura
That leads to the execution of the Tarlys, which in turn leads to Tyrion reckoning with whether he’s following the right person. And Varys tells him he has to learn to control her. I don’t know what the episode did with that afterward.

But this is what you were saying about it being an oddly paced episode: it seemed like we did slow down, we had to think carefully about this scene of Dany dispensing justice. This awful martyrdom that was really pointless. It also explains why we met up with Dickon: so we could see him juuuust enough to not really want him to fry, even though he’s kind of an asshole to Sam.

Tyrion is being way more practical than Dany. It seems like Tyrion’s solution with the Tarlys wasn’t meant only to represent empathy contrasted with Dany’s hard line. His way also seemed very practical: both of these guys are good in battle. Use them!

Cheryl
Exactly. Why are we incinerating excellent fighters?

Roz
It certainly presents Dany in an unflattering light. In the after-episode special, the showrunners said, “Was it smart? Was it just? You decide.” I don’t think we’re meant to like it. She looks very self-satisfied as she turns away from these two burning heaps and all the terrified soldiers, and Tyrion looks heartbroken and really stricken.

Jon offered mercy to those Houses in the North, when Sansa wanted to punish them. Here, Tyrion wanted to offer mercy, but Dany went through with her punishment. It doesn’t seem to be a positive thing.

With Dany, we constantly see this push and pull, where she’s supposed to be merciful, but not weak; powerful, but still have a heart. Maybe this is the pendulum of her character’s development swinging back one way for now.

Laura
It’s an interesting gender reversal I’d never really put together: the women are the ones who are really stuck on vengeance. As a little book aside, it’s interesting to note that even without the Catelyn Stark storyline of her returning from the dead, hellbent on vengeance, we are still getting the idea of women stuck on vengeance.

The only one who seems to be slowing her roll on this front is Cersei, weirdly.

Roz
But she’s up to something!

Cheryl
Sparing the Tarlys could eventually come back to haunt her — like in “Saving Private Ryan,” when Tom Hanks let the German guy go and he kills him at the end. You can’t release those who will not bend the knee serve you.

On the other hand, the way she uttered “Dracarys” sounded so emotionless and flat. When Jon had to kill those four people for murdering him (!), he clearly didn’t want to do it.

Roz
That’s a good comparison. It was a matter of duty and pragmatism for Jon, whereas Dany seems like she’s just taking out her temper. For the rest of the episode, she seemed waaaay less certain of herself. Like maybe she was having second thoughts. Especially as none of her advisors seemed to think it was the greatest idea. She seems much more off-balance or even a little girlish in the rest of the episode, at least compared to how she starts in that first scene.

Laura
That leads into Jon and his new best friend Lassie, aka Drogon. We can all tell that we’re supposed to say, “Ooh, more hints about his Targaryen nature!” We get it!

Cheryl
I have to say I didn’t even think about that connection. D’oh. It never even occurred to me.

Laura
There were a lot of things like that in this episode in particular that seemed to be fan service. There’s all these fan theories that other people are going to ride the dragon.

Roz
“The dragon has three heads”? I thought of that too, Laura. Another prophecy. Basically: there’s three dragons in the world now, and only one dragon-rider. So who are the other two people who are going to be the “heads of the dragon”? That’s what I thought about when I saw this scene with Jon.

Maybe that’s why they built up Dany as kind of annoying, because they also just incidentally dropped that maybe she doesn’t have the best claim to the throne. Maybe they’re building up the drama of an eventual reveal: that she’s proceeding as if she’s the rightful ruler, when actually she’s not.

Laura
If Jon’s parents are who we think they are, then he himself is fire and ice. He’s already got both. He’s got the Stark blood, he’s got the Targaryen blood. So does he need Dany, if he can also control dragons?

To me, I wondered if it was a glimmer of jealousy or fear in her expression: “Oh shit, what if someone else can do this? I better act like I’m really important. ‘Oh, are you scared of my dragon?’ ”

He clearly isn’t scared of your dragon.

Roz
And Drogon was scary when he was running toward Jon!

In this episode, Dany certainly seemed more obvious about being interested in Jon. Maybe she thought, “Oh, I like Jon, and my dragon can tell he’s a good guy too.” Like when your dog likes your boyfriend.

Cheryl
How many people approach her as an equal? How many people are not afraid of her dragons? And he’s so nonchalant about it. He just doesn’t have time for that bullshit. “No, I don’t have to wait for you to let me go” he in effect says. When it’s time to go, he just walks away. He doesn’t even look back as he heads into the water. He’s not even allowing himself to be attracted to her because he’s on a mission, and he needs to fulfill his duty. He clearly doesn’t see her as above him.

Roz
He said in this episode, “I am a king.” I haven’t heard him say anything like that before. It’s always been more about “my people chose” me or “I have a job to do.”

Cheryl
In my mind, she clearly was trying to pull rank because she didn’t want him to go. And Jorah saw it.

Laura
They’re hitting us over the head with the flirting. But as something new, there’s also this competitiveness between them. Obviously they were rivals before they made this alliance, as tenuous as it is. But he hasn’t been interested in the power aspect of it. So maybe it’s not just her trying to tamp down his ambitions — which he doesn’t have; it’s more, her trying to tamp down his ambitions — which are growing.

Roz
I also thought she was sent off-center by developing a plan — her “be a dragon!” plan — to attack the supply chain, and then being faced with advisors who are all meh about it. In the rest of the episode, it seemed like she was seeking Jon’s approval or at least some point of connection. She gives a kind of cute, flirtatious goodbye to him, and he says, “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.” Peace out! It’s very formal.

Cheryl
Then he just goes to the front of the boat and starts pulling it into the water. No longing looks back, no nothing. Just, “Okay, I have a job to do, it’s off to face the horde of the dead!” Everybody else wants Dany, and Jon doesn’t. Maybe that’s what she finds attractive.

Roz
She does try to reiterate what she sees as their common bond, that they both want to help people from positions of power, and power is terrible sometimes. But it doesn’t seem like anyone is super convinced by that.

Laura
Everybody in this show who’s still around has had someone close to them die. If you’re still around at this point, you’re a survivor. Both Dany and Jon have had a true love die, if you consider those to be Drogo and Ygritte.

Dany was very careful about her emotions when she told Daario to stay behind. So she’s also done what Jon’s doing to her now. I think that Jon sees the beginning of a spark there, but he’s not thinking of it in practical terms, such as the possibility that they could rule together. I think Dany’s thinking something like that when she sees him. “This is a partner I could have in ruling Westeros, as well as someone who I think is kind of cool.” Meanwhile he acts like, “I think she’s hot, so I should just ignore it.”

Cheryl
That segues into what Arya says to Sansa. “You’re thinking this, right?” Sansa’s like, “No, no, no, I’m not thinking of it!” But she was thinking it, of course.

When Jon and Dany stand on that escarpment, and she’s looking back toward her dragons, he’s staring at her — and then he physically shakes himself out of it.

The other time there’s a gaze between them is in the war room meeting, when he says he will lead the party beyond the Wall himself, and he throws a look back at her as if to say, “Yeah, I’m going.” She responds physically, but he gives her a very short and emotionless stare: “I’m not going to give you googly eyes! This is a business decision. Don’t look at me that way!” He just doesn’t have time for it.

That to me in a way is very similar to what’s going on between Arya and Sansa. Like Jon, Arya perceives what’s going on in Sansa’s head. Sansa of course wants more from her position of power, but she can’t say it.

Roz
Let’s talk about that scene. It’s interesting that you made that comparison. The exchange between Arya and Sansa was my favorite part of the episode but also the most excruciating to watch, because I’m invested in both of their characters. Their difficult relationship was well-established early on, so it’s fascinating to see that same dynamic come back in this grown-up way, with these high stakes. They’re not talking about a pretty dress in the throne room at King’s Landing, or hairstyles.

Laura
It’s not, “Do I have to take needlepoint lessons or can I take sword-fighting lessons?” It’s more “Who’s going to betray whom” at this point.

Cheryl
They’re not bonding or sharing memories. There’s no emotional bonding. It’s pure business and politics.

Roz
Arya’s a total asshole in this scene. We have spent so long rooting for her, one way or another. And it’s really cool to see her come into her power and ability at this point, especially after sticking through so many long episodes in Braavos.

But life is so much simpler for her! She doesn’t have to worry about making people get along. She doesn’t have to worry about building alliances. She can act on her own and do whatever she wants on her own.

I think she’s being very unfair to Sansa. For example, it’s ironic that Jon is the one who insisted that Sansa take the Lord of Winterfell’s chambers. Yet Arya just assumes that Sansa wants it for herself, because Arya still has an old idea of what the childish Sansa cares about in life.

Cheryl, it’s interesting that the discussion of power is what made you think of this scene between the sisters. We just had Dany say that a position of power is how we help people. I think it’s okay that Sansa wants more power, as long as she’s not acting to betray Jon, and she’s really not.

Cheryl
I totally agree that a) Arya was an asshole, and b) Sansa did nothing wrong. How old was Arya when she started this journey? Nine? Ten? Her formative years have been under grueling circumstances, and her maturity has been stunted. As of now, she’s unable to make connections and to have empathy, to see something from somebody else’s point of view.

Laura
Sansa has displayed traits of being very vengeful in the past, but she actually is tamping it down a bit, both to be consistent with what Jon wants and also just to keep the peace, keep everybody together. She’s being strategic, and she’s seen a lot more court life; Arya has none of this experience, so she’s just thinking about justice. Sansa is thinking about how to keep everyone from rebelling, which is what Jon was afraid of, going south in the first place and now north to the wall.

Roz
There are real-world consequences that Sansa is aware of and Arya dismisses. Arya might not be wrong when she says “You care about their opinions,” which is the cruelest interpretation, and it’s quite possible that Sansa does indeed care. But Sansa’s actual response is that “Glover has 500 men, the Vale has 2,000”; it’s very much in the collecting-grain, taking-stock-of-the-armory mindset.

What is Jon doing in the South? He’s trying to build alliances. What is he doing in the North? He’s trying to build alliances. Sansa is actually the one holding to his idea of leadership in this episode. But Arya thinks she’s defending Winterfell in Jon’s name, in her favorite brother’s name.

Cheryl
Arya’s been traveling alone with her weapon, just like the Hound, and now she doesn’t know how to integrate and that’s going to be a challenge. It was great to see that reunion last week, but now we see it’s not going to be easy. Bran has become weird and emotionally dead inside, and Arya’s got some of the same issues. Yes, they’re alive, but not 100 percent there. It’s going to take a while.

So did you have any idea what was on that little scroll that was tucked away in Littlefinger’s bed?

Roz
The producers implied that Littlefinger planted it because he knew Arya was listening and watching.

Laura
I interpreted it that way too. Maybe it doesn’t really matter what’s on the note; what matters is that Littlefinger has made Arya think her sister is hiding something.

Cheryl
So then we’re thrown to the beach at King’s Landing, where Tyrion and Davos show up. Bronn brings Jaime to Tyrion, and they reconnect in what I thought was a badly handled scene. It was so dark and murky, and it didn’t have the emotional weight that I wanted it to have.

Roz
I was really captivated by it. Jaime and Tyrion always had this unlikely bond as brothers, tested through some unusually trying times. I think those actors have really sold it all the way through the series. So I did find it to be an emotional reconnection and reckoning.

Laura
It was sort of like black comedy. Tyrion’s pouring his heart out, and Jaime cuts him off. I was so offended on Tyrion’s behalf. Jaime stops Tyrion’s outpouring of emotion. There’s still a connection; he didn’t immediately want to kill Tyrion. Clearly, whatever relationship they had when they last saw each other, it’s not the same any more.

Cheryl
Something has changed. I feel like Jaime’s lost now. He’s gone all the way over to Team Cersei. He’s not even questioning her. After that scene in which she says she’s pregnant and pats her stomach, I thought: she is setting him up. With the pregnancy, she’s giving him what he wants, and he responds like a cat following a laser toy. He is not even thinking. He’s just blindly following her.

Laura
This is why I think her plotting with Qyburn has something to do with the pregnancy or with Jaime. There’s a weird long game those two are playing.

I don’t really understand why Cersei is so quick to agree to make peace with Dany — and just beat her later.

Roz
We’ve talked about how Jaime has unrealized paternal instincts. What I was really drawn in by was how for just one moment Cersei looked happy. I haven’t seen her look happy since she thought Myrcella was coming home, in that moment before she knew her daughter was dead. Then as it always is with her, she immediately poisons it one beat afterward by threatening him, saying “don’t betray me again” as they’re embracing. I feel like he’s always drawn in and then dealt poison that he just drinks up.

Cheryl
You’re so right, he just drinks it up. What was the “betrayal”? That he went to meet Tyrion? He told her afterward. I don’t get the big deal there.

Roz
I think she would have preferred that Jaime take his sword and swipe off Tyrion’s head on sight.

Maybe that is why Bronn conveniently made sure that Jaime was not carrying any sharp objects, only a practice sword.

Laura
Apparently the way we’re going to get Cersei to take part in the fight against the dead is to show her evidence. Because Cersei works as an evidence-based and logical player in this game? I don’t understand.

And we’re going to try to capture a wight, which is a really bad idea. Bring this live wight all the way south to King’s Landing! And then we’re going to have Qyburn near a wight, and that’s real bad.

Roz
She already has a resurrected dead zombie giant dude who does her every bidding, so why’s she going to be so impressed?

Laura
It doesn’t seem like this is actually a plan that has to go anywhere. It was an excuse to get those seven people together to go north of the wall.

If I recall, there’s a distinction: we have the Night’s King–type of White Walkers, with the blue eyes, who are super-undead, and then we just have the zombies.

Roz
There’s the Others and then there’s the wights. The early episodes were just filled with wights. And now you can’t get a good wight when you need one.

I think we all agree this was a very goofy and not very clear motivation/explanation of why this is the great big plan all of a sudden.

All these random characters showing up in one episode is a lot to handle.

Laura
Let’s talk about the posse up north. It seems like a Western to me. Someone described it as sort of a heist, like “Ocean’s Eleven.”

Roz
I would have been more willing to go along with that if they had saved it to open the next episode. Rather than reintroducing Jorah, who has always been on Team Dany and all of a sudden putting him on Team Jon. And Gendry! That’s an example of fan service there, Laura. There’s no reason for this character to come back, and that line about “Thought you were still rowing!” was definitely ripped from the message boards and comments.

Roz
I think the Gendry actor did great in actually making something of his scenes: when you see these two kids raised as bastards by fathers who were best friends, he seems really excited to meet a Stark for the first time. It’s kind of cute, it’s just not necessary.

Laura
I’m really waiting for Jon and Arya to meet, of all the reunions, because I think that’s going to start pulling some of their character flaws into relief, in a good way. But they skipped right over that, and so did Gendry. No time for Winterfell! Apparently moving at a breakneck pace up the coast to get to the Wall!

Roz
That was the one justification of traveling by ship, that they could go directly to Eastwatch. Since he got this raven about Bran’s vision, he knew that’s where they needed to go, and they could get there directly by ship rather than an overland journey. Of course, why didn’t anybody send a raven to Jon before, telling him his brother and sister were still alive?

Cheryl
Thinking about that posse, I thought about “Seven Samurai” or the “Magnificent Seven” — basically, seven disparate warriors who come from different places to protect a village of peasants. It’s a group of people who’ve never worked together before who have to perform a task.

Laura
We didn’t talk about Sam!

The maesters are yet another holdover of “old Westeros” — one of the last ones, right? Operating the same way they always have. Everything else has fallen apart — the lines of succession are gone; Cersei is ruling, though she has no legitimate claim to the throne; and it’s war all the time now — but the maesters are still toiling away at Oldtown, to make sure everything’s really true. History moves slowly, anyway. Sam’s trying to impress upon them that what’s coming is not something they’ll have time to mull over. This is action time. But they’re not men of action. They’re men of careful consideration.

Cheryl
They’re concerned about the ravenry. That’s their order of business while the world crumbles outside of their little citadel. I felt that too, Laura, that these are not men of action, and Sam was turning into a man of action. He couldn’t take it any more.

Roz
Did you catch what he says when he leaves, which echoes the cruel thing his father said: “If you become a maester, you’ll just be reading about the accomplishments of better men.” Sam says he’s tired of doing that.

He’s also kind of pulling what Arya did and leaving half-trained, which makes him a weird hybrid thing, a half-maester. He’s still smart. He still reads the book and follows the instructions.

Laura
He’s also really, really breaking the rules, and Sam’s not much of a rule-breaker either. He’s stealing scrolls. That’s a big deal. I have a feeling if the maesters knew he was stealing scrolls, they’d go after them to get them back.

Roz
Maybe Sam will also have to make a choice between his heritage and title, versus renouncing it for the sake of some other duty or calling. Or vice versa, giving up his dream to go take on his familial duty.

But: where is he going?

Laura
Even if he is the last remaining Tarly, he has taken the black. He was going to become maester at the Wall. Unless he pulls some kind of Jon trick, he literally has forsaken all that. Not that it matters, because laws are being broken all the time in this world now.

Cheryl
And he’s bopping Gilly. So that vow is broken already.

Laura
And, annulment!

We have a maester who kept very anal track of the numbers of windows and stairs and bowel movements, and so no one reads his book. (Which is a throwback to the archmaester telling Sam, “You have to put a little interest in your books or no one will read them.”) Well, this is why. “By the way, side note: annulled a marriage and remarried a prince. Anyway, back to my counting of windows.” Which is just bizarre. Let’s assume that’s why the history got lost. Of course it means that Jon is the true-born son and the true-born heir.

I feel like at this point in the show, it doesn’t matter. There’s so much focus on blood and what blood means. Maybe this revelation is important not so much because he’s not a bastard, but more because his two parents were in love and it wasn’t a rape, which is a relief at this point, that there’s one less rape.

Roz
It could matter for the dynamic between him and Daenerys.

Cheryl
It also reflects back to when Gendry and Jon met and talked about their fathers fighting together. We’re reminded that Ned is not really Jon’s father, but Jon’s identity is based on Ned as his father.

It comes back to our last conversation: What’s your identity? What is Dany’s identity if she doesn’t have a natural claim to the throne or if it’s not as clear and easy-breezy as she thought it was? Who are you? It’s like Jaime without his hand: who is she without the notion of her right to rule as the true-born queen? For Jon, who is his father? He knows nothing about his father. The way he identifies himself is as Ned’s son, yet that has nothing to do with who really he is, except for his learned values. What’s in a name, what’s in a title, who are you? And how your actions reflect who you are much more meaningfully than your title.

It’s reflected in the two Tarlys who died. They died for a sense of honor, which in the end was a complete waste. It was a stupid reason to die.

Laura
They should have bent the knee. Bend the knee, and then plot, right? This is why we think of Littlefinger et al. as actually being better players in the game than the Tarlys.

At the same time, we knew Daenerys made the wrong decision by giving them this “choice.” She knew: these particular men, given the choice of bend the knee or die — they’ll die. It also reminded me of the way she roasted all the grain and all the food. It’s a waste. At this point, you can’t afford to do that. WINTER IS COMING.

Roz
“Give in or die” is also not a choice. She says several times, “I gave them a choice!

Cheryl
As I watched Tyrion wander through the waste among the horse carcasses buried in the ash, I thought of the Battle of the Bastards, when all those horses died. Last week, as Jaime and Bronn leaped into the water, their horses were incinerated. It’s something very specific in this battle and the Battle of the Bastards. Horses and grain. I think that’s going to come back to bite them.

Roz
The Dothraki have been established as having superior horsemanship. Maybe they’re not quite as much of a force to contend with without their horses.

Last note: I believe this is the first time we’ve seen Eastwatch in the opening credits. So we got a new place! But I’m just not buying into Eastwatch and the beyond-the-wall ranging as the big new mission and point of drama, and I wish I felt more the urgency and importance of it. Because I did like a lot of the acting and character interactions in this episode, but I can’t get invested in their goal now.

Cheryl
Me neither.

Laura
The Hound has some kind of role to play. Do Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr actually have a role other than getting the Hound up to the Wall? Now they’ve gone beyond the Wall along with the ranging party!

Roz
Last season we had so much heavy stuff about faith and gods. That’s been completely absent this season other than references once or twice to the Lord of Light. And in this case, the Hound actually was like, “Shut the fuck up about the Lord of Light!” when the subject came up. Let’s get down to business.

That is the reason Beric is still alive; he was resurrected. That is the reason that all of a sudden Thoros — who was always a Red Priest, but a drunk dropout Red Priest — now has these powers. It all comes down to this faith. Presumably we’re going to get back into visions and prophecy and divine power, but we just haven’t been set up for that as much this season.

Laura
Littlefinger’s having his own side conversations now, and no one thinks it’s weird, because there’s no bureaucracy in Winterfell set up to handle it otherwise, like the Small Council.

Squawks

Laura:
Fermented crab! The Viagra of Westeros. Davos is a crafty fella, let’s not forget.

Roz:
Duly noting: the maesters at Oldtown make a quick reference to “Jenny of Oldstones, who thought she was descended from the Children of the Forest,” and everyone laughs. So that’s a small shout out to lore from the book.

Cheryl:
Does anyone else suspect that Cersei’s pregnancy is a setup? That she knew exactly what strings to pull to keep Jaime in line? That the morning after she initiated sex with him, she made sure her handmaiden saw him in her bed and told her to change the sheets? That it could be that either she is not pregnant or someone else is the father? Last season, after Tommen dies she seemed completely indifferent and emotionally dead inside …

Like this:

Gentle readers, did you too feel that Episode 4 contained just too much action to process? We share your sentiments. Join us as we plunge into “the Spoils of War.”

Brush the ashes away and regain your equilibrium with three fans with different perspectives: Rosalyn Claret, who has read the books she “forgets” how many times; Laura Fletcher, a casual fan of the television and book series; and Cheryl Collins, who does not read.

Join the conversation in comments!

Laura

We know the gold from the Reach ended up in King’s Landing, so Cersei did technically get “the spoils of war,” but she quite possibly lost everything else.

Cheryl
Just as with Bronn’s bag of gold that spilled on the ground, all that hard work to get the grain from Highgarden was incinerated.

Rosalyn
They set up its destruction with good old grumpy Randyll Tarly saying that the line was too spread out and vulnerable.

Cheryl
He was right.

Roz
Tarly seems to be chafing under Jaime’s leadership. Meanwhile, his son Dickon confessed that he felt uncomfortable going against his former liege lord. The Tarlys had been loyal to Highgarden for his entire life.

Cheryl
Dickon came off well. I liked him. I remember the last time we met him, at dinner with Sam: he wasn’t the asshole his father was.

I wonder how they are going to bring Dickon further into the show, because they wouldn’t spend precious minutes on him unless he will be important in some way.

Roz
I started to pay attention to Dickon in the last episode because of the way Jaime was looking at him. I kept thinking that Jaime was seeing this glimpse of his former self. This man who is young and strong and whole, the favored child of the family, looming over him. Jaime is looking much more grey than golden these days, and we saw it in this battle: he was fumbling with his sword, he had to tell Bronn that he couldn’t operate Qyburn’s weapon with one hand, and then there was his last left-handed charge at the end.

I think Jaime still has this fathering instinct. He really would have liked to teach a kid, to talk about a son’s first battle, etc.

Laura
A son who wasn’t Joffrey. Like, a real human child.

Cheryl
Someone to pass that information on to. He’s had a lifetime of learning. I felt like Dickon was someone he could bond with, a mirror to his younger self. Jaime could talk to him about how “glory” is all bullshit— that you have to act honorably in battle, but it all smells like shit.

Laura
Jaime had that burst of energy when he charges at Daenerys. I like the interpretation of him saying “that’s who I used to be” plus “I don’t believe in all that stuff any more.”

Jaime seems unable to stop being noble, and BOY HOWDY did Dany clearly make him flash back to the Mad King – her father. If he were a comic book character, his thought bubble would have been, “I have to stop her!” He’s no Clark Kent or Superman, but that goes to show what a fucked-up universe GoT operates in.

Maybe it was also an attempt to reclaim his youth? His former station? His leadership? But it was a stupid move.

Cheryl
Was it stupid? Wouldn’t you have to try to kill the enemy queen if she was incapacitated or in a weakened position?

Laura
It’s not entirely stupid. He probably knew full well he wasn’t quite fast enough and good enough to pull it off, but he’d try it anyway. If it were the old Jaime, Daenerys would be toast, and that would be the end of Game of Thrones.

Cheryl
It reminds me of Jon standing up against that charging army in the Battle of the Bastards, with his sword raised high as the whole army charges at him, and he’s got a look of “I guess this is the end, but I’m going to go out honorably.”

Roz
Jaime had nothing left to lose. I keep wanting there to be more to his character because I feel like he peaked really early in this series! I like that interpretation of his moment with Daenerys and the dragon being a flashback to the Mad King and the one defining action in his life – trying to strike down someone who threatened to burn them all.

But it seems like more and more what’s really motivating him is to vanquish all the enemies – not because he really cares, but just so he can be back with Cersei in a world where they can be together.

Cheryl
They’ve both said it before: We’ll kill everyone until we’re the only ones left.

Laura
Jaime is going to survive and presumably be taken hostage or at the very least be unable to return straight to King’s Landing. What will it mean for Cersei, what will it mean for Tyrion, and what will it mean for the Lannister army?

Roz
I’m tempted to bet that he’s going to die. I always wanted to see him repudiate Cersei and find his honor again. But what’s going to pull a man in full armor out of the water?

Cheryl
Also, his fall in the water makes me think of his travels with Brienne, when he’d lost his hand, and he and Brienne were in the baths. I likened that scene to a baptism, where he confessed his sins, purged his old self, and was being born anew, with a fuller understanding of himself and a reawakening of his old values.

I wonder if his plunge might hail back to that: if this will be a wake-up call to his better self. Because since he returned to King’s Landing, he’s been lost and not very interesting, and he hasn’t reined in Cersei in any meaningful way. He hasn’t been able to contain her.

Roz
It was interesting that Tyrion was watching this battle, when in the last one he was so far removed from it as to be a voiceover. In both, he was witnessing his betrayal of his own House in action, and it really seemed to affect him — and that he did not want Jaime to die.

Laura
I felt like he only had feelings for Jaime. I don’t think he cares what happens to the rest of the troops. He’s written off the Lannister army as just the cost of war. Maybe I’m being too callous about Tyrion, but not only would he be somewhat responsible for killing his brother but he killed his dad with no problem. I know it’s a very different scenario, but …

Cheryl
But Jaime was the one who helped Tyrion escape from King’s Landing. Tyrion would not be here if not for Jaime.

And of course there’s Bronn, Tyrion’s best bud. Tyrion introduced Bronn and Jaime, and now they’re fighting on one side, and he’s on the other.

Laura
Let’s talk about Arya’s reunion with Sansa. First we have Arya barred from Winterfell. Again, if you’re spending even a minute telling part of the story, it signifies something. Arya’s whole transformation has been the ability to be anonymous and to not be Arya Stark. So when she needs to put it on again, of course it doesn’t work.

Roz
This Winterfell has lived in her memory through all the show’s seasons. She’s been cut off from knowledge of home for a long time. So she asks for members of Ned’s household who were killed early on, not long after Ned was, but she never knew that.

I’ve thought about Arya’s and Sansa’s reunion more than almost any in the book, so I’m interested to hear what you thought of it.

Laura
Speaking purely as a TV fan, it was great to see Arya and Sansa share the screen again, just because the actors are really good friends in real life. But their characters have not shared the screen since Season 1.

Roz
And they did not part on great terms. They never got along at Winterfell, but by the end each one was mocking the other’s deepest hopes and dreams. Sansa was always embarrassed by Arya and told her she shouldn’t be trying to train. Now look at her – Arya really is a fucking fighter. Arya mocked Sansa because Sansa wanted to be a lady – and she is the lady of a great house now, but look at what that really means.

Cheryl
And the cost. Good point, Roz. And Sansa thought she was in love with Joffrey in Season 1! She only wanted to marry Joffrey.

Roz
And now they both talk about killing him.

Cheryl
Their reunion reminded me of something I once witnessed: I was in a forest on a hiking vacation, and a dog came to camp looking for scraps to eat. A car finally drove up to the site, and a woman jumped out and threw her arms around the dog. She said, “This is my dog! I lost it three weeks ago and we’ve been coming every weekend to look for it!” And the dog did not respond at all. It didn’t wag its tail. It just sat there while the owner cried and hugged it in joy. Eventually the dog began to recognize the owner and started to wag its tail, and remembered its positive feelings about her.

I feel like that’s what happened with Arya and Sansa. When Sansa embraced Arya, Arya was passive: she didn’t hug Sansa back. She acted just as she had with Hot Pie – totally affectless. They then have an exchange, and eventually Arya rushes to Sansa and embraces her. It’s as if she finally had a memory of what family is. Those emotions had lain fallow as she was so disconnected from anything resembling family. She was going to be a Faceless Man. Here, she reconnected with that more human part of herself.

Roz
That is such an interesting comparison. I noticed the first thing that Arya responds to is when Sansa mentions Jon, who was Arya’s favorite sibling. I jotted it down: “That’s the first thing that cracks her mask.” I realized I’d begun to think of Arya as wearing a mask. Of course — the Faceless Men. It confirms for me what I said after the last episode: her choice to go back to Winterfell was a really big deal. Bran even says he saw her “at the crossroads.”

Cheryl
I thought about the Hound, too. In ways that we might not have realized, she was following his path as a solo assassin who really didn’t have any human connections or feelings. She was just an automaton, a killing machine. Hopefully she’s reconnecting to something deeper and to the importance of family. Even Meera talks about going back to her family – she wants to be with them when the end comes. Now Arya is remembering why that is.

Laura
It’s interesting that Sansa knew where to find Arya: in the crypt, looking at their dad, an enduring character (even though Sean Bean had so little screen time). Despite the fact that patriarchy means next to nothing in the show now, he’s still their common ground.

Sansa doesn’t know Arya anymore — they haven’t seen each other in six or eight years at this point — yet she still knows where Arya will be. That is the power of family. As much as we were talking last time about Stark identity not really existing any more, maybe it is bubbling back up.

Roz
There was a moment of acknowledging grief, when they turned and looked at the statue. They’ve never had a chance to process their father’s death with anyone else in the family. Arya certainly hasn’t.

Cheryl
What about Arya’s reconnection with Bran?

Laura
Arya and Sansa could find common ground, even though they acknowledged they were going to leave a lot unsaid and that was how they were going to deal with it. They’ve both had so much trauma. Bran has had just as much trauma but is now all, “Yeah, but I feel a lot of things. I feel everything. So I’m cool.”

It’s what Meera said: “You died in that cave.” Bran’s back, but not really.

Roz
Frankly, I’ve found Bran to be a boring and annoying character. I think the reason he exists in the book is to represent one of the magical forces that are mustering and also to remind us that it’s a final battle fought on many different fronts (might, magic, faith, knowledge, intrigue, etc.). Bran’s part of that now, so his character is important.

But this episode reminded me that in the book, some of the earliest scenes are Bran POV scenes. He is a bright and active and curious child; he’s climbing and exploring and listening to the old stories. Seeing him in this episode reminded me of what is lost when we have all these siblings have been forged into powerful tools. They become more than they were, and yet there’s such a loss.

Cheryl
That was really strengthened for me when Sansa watched while Arya was fighting with Brienne. She seemed disgusted at the end and walked away: “I don’t know who this person is any more.” Here’s Bran, and Sansa can’t connect with him; here’s Arya, and Sansa can’t connect with her. Winterfell is filled with new people. There’s no shared memory. No one even remembers what Ned looked like.

So what is a family? Is it the building? We get a shot of Arya looking around Winterfell when she enters. Is that it? Is it blood? Is it shared memory? Whatever it is, it’s all crumbling. The connection has to be something deeper.

I found it quite interesting that Sansa does not seem to like or appreciate what Arya had turned into. I also found it interesting that Littlefinger was taken aback by Bran’s reference to “chaos is a ladder.” Littlefinger thought he knew everything, could control everything, imagine everything. And here’s Bran saying these things back to him. There’s no way Littlefinger can get his mind around that.

Roz
I think Littlefinger is discovering that these Stark children are not as easy to manipulate as he assumed or expected — although he’s up to something.

But I did not interpret Sansa’s reaction to the fight scene in that same way. I did not think she was disgusted or alienated. At first she’d thought that Arya was joking about her list and her mission to kill, and then all of a sudden Sansa sees how real it is. Maybe Cersei’s assassination is possible.

Laura
Sansa was standing next to Littlefinger, and I thought it was very parallel. She’s watching and processing: Arya’s return means something different than she thought. She and Jon have something else they can use. I don’t think it was quite that callous, but she’s Littlefinger’s protégé. Hopefully she’s taking the good parts of these evil people she’s been surrounded by for so long – the good parts of Littlefinger, that allow her to be calculating; the lessons from Cersei, that can allow her to be vengeful without being cruel. They were literally next to each other as they looked down. Littlefinger is always looming. Now Sansa is looming, too, and I’m not sure what to think.

Cheryl
Sansa didn’t watch until the end. It’s interesting that you had such different feelings about that than I did.

Roz
Going off something you just said, Cheryl, about how there no longer a shared memory: it’s true, but only in a very personal and immediate sense. If you think about it, that’s Bran’s entire function now. The memory of the North used to live at Winterfell in the form of their nanny – Hodor’s (great?) grandmother – who used to tell the tales of the First Men and the Children of the Forest, that only Bran really had ears for and believed in. The memory of the Long Night. And that’s gone now, in that the people who used to inhabit Winterfell are gone. Bran is also gone, but he now holds centuries of memory, and the heart trees have those memories; so even though his person has been erased, there’s more knowledge in Winterfell than there really has been in a long time.

It’s just incredibly unsatisfying to watch on a character level.

Laura
The only other parallel to that is the Citadel, where Sam is, which also holds the collective memory of Westeros.

Roz
Speaking of lost knowledge, why did no one ever invent a Super Dragon Missile Launcher before?

Watching Bronn operate the Scorpion was completely badass. But it doesn’t seem like the technology was unavailable before, so I wonder why it took a rogue maester to figure out how to do that.

Laura
It’s been at least a century since there were any dragons, and those were the size of cats. So it’s been a couple centuries since there were any larger dragons. Also, the first dragon attack, hundreds of years ago, was by surprise. Then everyone sort of accepted Targaryen rule for a long time. By the time rebellion was in order, with Robert, there weren’t any living dragons. The Mad King had none. So there was never a real need or opportunity to build one before.

Cheryl
Let’s go to the scene with Dany and Jon. It starts out with Dany talking to Missandei about sex, at the top of the steps. At the bottom of the steps, Jon arrives. Did you also think this? Sex is on their minds, and then Jon is down there. Then Jon leads her into the cave, which is this Lascaux kind of thing with the drawings.

It was an important and powerful scene when they walked out, somehow bonded in a way for reasons that have not been revealed; we don’t know what happened between them. There was certainly sexual tension. I wondered if they were going to kiss each other, or if she was going to slap him. They’re introducing the notion that there might be something between those two.

Of course Davos later alludes to whatever Jon is staring at on Dany, as well.

Roz
This is where I always assumed the series would end up, and it’s irritating that we’re finally getting to the relationship between these two key characters just as the pacing has accelerated so much.

But I agree with you that it was a very intimate scene. Partly because of the lighting: torchlight. Partly because Dany’s in a different mode – she’s not being imperious at all, at least at first — she’s sharing in this wondrous sight. Also partly because the last time Jon was in a cave, he was with Ygritte.

I also remembered: Ygritte was “kissed by fire.” That was her hair, remember? The way the wildlings always described red hair was “kissed by fire, touched by fire.” Maybe he likes those fiery girls.

Dany was much more open and interacting with him on a human level, rather than demanding allegiance.

Cheryl
Right. It seemed like there was mutual respect. But when Daenerys asked why he refused to bend the knee and why wouldn’t he put his peoples’ needs first before his pride, I had the same question for her. Why is it so important to her for Jon to bend the knee?

Laura
She still sees this whole queen thing as her birthright. Maybe not so much her birthright due to parentage but to who she is: she is the Unburnt, etc. She sees herself as having had a supernatural coronation. I don’t think she’s telling him to bend the knee simply because of pride, but she’s certainly not explaining that well to Jon: that she doesn’t want to be the queen because she wants power, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Cheryl
Missandei tells him that later.

Roz
It was really grating, when she regained her imperious tone. What she said wasn’t exactly wrong – saying that survival is more important than pride – but it just felt like too glib a summary of Jon’s situation. She doesn’t grasp the complexity of what’s happening in the North. He’s already given up quite a bit of pride, doing plenty of things that his men didn’t want him to do, risking the loss of all respect from those he’s supposed to lead. I don’t think pride is what’s motivating him to keep the title.

Laura
Absolutely not. And look what happened last time he did what was right as opposed to what was popular: he got killed! So it makes sense for him to be thinking, look, I can’t just bend the knee, people won’t accept that. He’ll lose the North, the North will become chaotic, and there won’t be a clear leader any more.

Cheryl
Is it true that the Northerners won’t accept a king that bends the knee?

Roz
They did long ago; they’d been united as the Seven Kingdoms for a long time. But since the upheaval after Robert’s death, they’ve twice declared now that they’re done with all that shit. The South was treacherous and killed the Starks. So the Northerners declared for Robb and the old ways. They then did the same for Jon. He almost faced mutiny for simply saying that he was going to Dragonstone. Plus, they feel the threat so much more acutely: not only of the White Walkers but of winter in general. “Winter is coming” are the Stark words because that is some serious shit even in the best of times, and the South truly doesn’t understand that.

Laura
The Northeners want to be isolationists. They don’t want the King in the North to be the king of everything. They don’t want to go to King’s Landing and conquer it. They only want to have a ceasefire. Of course it’s more complicated now because they’ve got White Walkers – they’re literally fighting for their lives – and they’re running out of food for the winter.

Roz
I liked your comment Cheryl about that scene with Jon and Dany emerging together out of the cave. That camera angle and framing seemed really striking.

Cheryl
The scene was quiet, important. Jon and Dany walked out of the cave side by side, as equals. It was my favorite scene, watching them quietly emerge as the waves crashed, the camera behind them. It almost seemed as if they were holding hands, had merged. They had “forged” into something. There was some transformation in there, but we don’t know into what.

And Theon shows up.

Laura
What’s going to happen with Yara? Theon’s coming to seek help to save her. I don’t know why it matters. I love Yara – I want her to stick around – I just don’t understand where that plot is going.

Roz
For me, the pacing is the issue again. This great big alliance between Martell and Targaryen and Greyjoy and Tyrell only lasted for one episode! We hardly knew ye! And it’s already fallen apart. I know that’s the whole plot stirring Dany on right now, but it’s almost as anticlimactic as the very beginning when Drogo hyped the Dothraki to mount the world, and then it all fell apart.

Cheryl
Theon was like a brother to Jon. So these two “brothers” are reunited. Just like Bran, Sansa, and Arya, both Jon and Theon had journeys in which they turned into very different people. Jon has had his miraculous resurrection. I’m interested to see how connected those two are now.

In the prequel, they made sure to show us again that after they drag Theon out of the water, he is lying on the deck and says he tried to save Yara. The sailor responds, “You wouldn’t be here if you tried.”

Roz
Right before the Greyjoy attack, Yara says that Theon’s official role is to be her protector, kind of generously. Ellaria Sand thinks it’s ridiculous. Then obviously Theon fails to protect Yara.

But who is the one person Theon asks about when he shows up in this episode? Sansa. The one other person who knows “no one can protect anyone.” They both share something that they’ve seen in their time with the Boltons. Theon’s still kicking, but I don’t think he has the same idea of heroics, or even duty or honor, as anybody else does.

Laura
It’s interesting to remember that Jon knew the Boltons but only on the battlefield (and that one taunting letter when he was Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch). I don’t think he knows fully what’s happened to Sansa. He clearly doesn’t know what happened to Theon.

Roz
I keep thinking about Season 1. When they were kids, all either Jon or Theon wanted was to claim their birthright. That’s what set Theon on his treacherous path: he wanted to go back and be recognized as the firstborn son of Balon Greyjoy and not as the ward of the Starks. Jon really wanted to be recognized as a Stark and not a Snow – in his heart, at least. Neither of them want this birthright, now, it seems.

Cheryl
And they cannot.

Roz
It seems like a long time ago – a really long time ago – that those dreams were key motivations for either of them. But these two were never quite properly part of their families either.

Cheryl
The dreams and aspirations of all the characters have fallen away since Season 1.

Did you notice that there was an emphasis on titles, names, and rank in this episode?

Davos: “Is it King Jon? King Snow?”

“I’m not Lord Stark”: Bran correcting Littlefinger.

Cheryl
Is it a sign of the system breaking down? The old caste system, titles, obeisance — these were a constant thread running throughout the episode. It started with Jaime and Bronn and rigidly applied court titles, and devolved through the episode.

“My lord” and “my lady” — they mean nothing at the end, like the bag of gold that spills from Bronn’s horse.

“I’m not a lady,” Brienne pointedly tells Pod.

Laura
Even if the families get back together and there’s a coalescing of factions, old alliances, the old system is not going to come back together. It’s sort of humpty-dumptyish.

Roz
It doesn’t fit the people who are left any more or the situation. It’s not that it’s breaking down, it just doesn’t fit – square pegs and round holes.

Cheryl
It’s all about survival now. It’s not even about glory, as Dickon’s reply remind us. Remember in the first season, how characters talked about glory and honor and having others sing songs about them? No one is thinking about that any more.

It was a little startling to see evidence of the White Walkers way south. Dragonstone seems really far south of the Wall.

Missandei talks about how she and the others from Essos have chosen Daenerys as their queen, regardless of lineage or lines of succession. Dany reminds Jon that his people have “chosen” him to lead. Since we didn’t get a real Kingsmoot in the Iron Islands, and what with Mance Rayder being show-dead, Dany and Jon may be the only semi-elected leaders around. I think this episode is trying to highlight that they share this in common. For now.

Like this:

The reunions continue in “The Queen’s Justice.” Dany and Jon finally meet, Jaime and the Lannisters gain the upper hand over her forces, and the Stark-formely-known-as-Bran returns to Winterfell.

As we speed through at breakneck pace, join three fans with different perspectives: Rosalyn Claret, who has read the books yet says she “forgets” how many times; Laura Fletcher, a casual fan of the television and book series; and Cheryl Collins, who does not read.

Laura: Game of Thrones talks about generations – and especially fathers – all the time, but I think it really hammered that theme home this week. The entire older generation has been wiped out, and in this episode particularly — as with Jon and Daenerys — all the people in this generation are now meeting each other.

Of course the great and strange irony is that Jon and Daenerys are actually in separate generations – but we won’t worry about that right now.

Cheryl: There is one father they’ve brought back again this season, Sam’s father. He’s obviously going to play some role, and the conflict between those two is real.

I’m thinking about everybody coming to terms with the sins of their fathers and the weaknesses of their fathers – both Dany and Jon acknowledge that.

On the other hand, Cersei really didn’t acknowledge any weakness in her father. Instead we have “you are your father’s daughter” and “you’ve learned from your father well.”

Roz: Yes, which is the highest compliment you can pay to her.

I’ve started to think of Cersei as the show’s ultimate cautionary tale, and the foil for everybody. I think you’re really right about the generational theme in this episode, and she is the contrasting example who’s proud to follow in her father’s footsteps, while every other character is willfully trying to make a departure, negotiating these inherited titles and allegiances and oaths and wars and debts.

Laura: Speaking of her father – Tywin – even Jaime is moving away from his father. When Jaime was going to polish off Olenna, he explained his choice to minimize troops at Casterly Rock and march down to take Highgarden, a decision based on a mistake that Tywin had made.

Cheryl: Jaime also mentioned that he’d learned from the mistake he made with Robb at the battle of Whispering Wood, when Robb captured him. So he’s learning from mistakes. Can we say that Cersei is — or is not — learning from mistakes?

Roz: I would say she’s not. Unlike the others, she’s not trying to make a departure from the legacy of her father. She’s trying to live up to it and be recognized as part of it. That’s why I think she’s interesting: she has this ongoing struggle for recognition and legitimacy that came from being married off against her will. The interesting thing about the last two episodes is that both Sansa and Daenerys have talked about their experiences in that exact same situation. So that’s what I mean about her as cautionary tale – she’s trying to live up to the worst people of the previous generation, but partly because she was never able to fully participate in and of her own self, before now.

There are others who are also constrained this way, and we’re in a position to watch them: Are they going to give in to their worst instincts or not?

Even Olenna, who is part of this older generation, did give into some worst instincts. Just not quite that extreme.

Cheryl: Although we like Olenna more, for a variety of reasons, she’s as cold and un-empathetic to the people she rules as Cersei. She’s not that different. It’s a difference in degree, but not of quality. She’s not very concerned about the people. She’s interested in power and maintaining the power structure.

And I hear what you’re saying, Roz – Cersei’s not creative enough to take what she’s learned from her father and try to reconfigure it for the better – she’s drunk the Kool-Aid.

Roz: She’s not a canny schemer. She just has this instinct for vengeance and making sure she comes out ahead.

The weird thing is Arya is the only other character who’s had just as much of a single-minded obsession with vengeance. Not justice, but vengeance. And I would say that was true up until the moment she decided to go back to Winterfell in the last episode. I feel like everyone’s at these moments where they can depart from the course that Cersei’s taken. She’s been forged by all this bitterness of circumstance, and others have choices.

Ironically, that’s a word — “choice” — Cersei used a lot in the scene where she enacts her terrible plot on Ellaria and her daughter, the Sand Snake. Cersei says, “You’ve made your choice.” And she’s making sure debts are paid. Daughter for daughter. It’s just really creepy and horrible.

Cheryl: And of course Ellaria was repaying the loss of her lover … who was repaying the loss of his sister.

Laura: Oberyn and his sister, Elia Martell.

Cheryl: So the cost of vengeance and feuding is wiping people out.

I thought it was very explicit that they were trying to draw parallels — which I had never thought of before — between Sansa, Dany, and Cersei. For example, in Dany’s speech in which she’s talking about all the degradation she had to go through and how she was raped, sold as chattel, and married off. And everything that you’re describing with Cersei, Roz. Of course we know that happened to Sansa too: raped, degraded, married against her will. All of a sudden we’re seeing these three in high relief. What are the choices each one is making to process what has happened to them or come to terms with that? How are their choices now reflecting on their character in terms of the way they’re going to exercise power?

It seems to me that’s what this season is going to be about. How are these women going to make choices in the way they are going to exercise power?

Laura: It’s interesting about revenge and “an eye for an eye,” and the way Cersei went after Ellaria’s daughter: that’s pretty on the nose with the scene of Arya Stark literally killing a roomful of Freys. We cheer on Arya, because she’s killing the bad guys, but that’s sort of an inescapable parallel now.

Cersei and Jaime especially talk about power and vengeance, and Cersei’s motivations for continuing on this course. She says “It’s just the two of us left,” so basically, screw it. Whereas I think Arya’s approach to avenging people is much different. She’s obviously not doing it for personal power. She seems to be at least attempting justice. I would say the reason behind it is a little bit more relatable. But the tools she uses are pretty much the same. The both even use poison.

Roz: I was reflecting after the last two episodes how in this show, we’re so often made to both cheer for and revile vengeance as a motivator. It can be kind of challenging as a viewer. It makes you think. What are the moments when we’re rooting for a character doing unspeakable acts, and when are we hating a character for doing unspeakable acts?

Roz: Tyene! Tyene is the Sand Snake in the book whose expertise is poison. That’s how she kills. Side note. Go on.

Laura: After that scene, Cersei forces herself on Jaime. It seems like it’s more about violence and power than it is about being turned on. It seems like she was turned on by that! I don’t think that was about sex. I think it was about mortality and power and powerlessness.

Roz: She’s ascendant again. Iit’s a reversal from an earlier season – one of the more controversial scenes between Cersei and Jaime, in the sept. Remember when Joffrey died? This time, Jaime’s the one who says no, and she does force herself on him.

Cheryl: And she services him. It was like the reverse of what happened with Grey Worm and Missandei. Which seems like an interesting choice.

One thing I wondered about: first of all, the breathtaking speed as these armies are being moved across like chess pieces. Tyrion’s voiceover describes what’s happening as we see the troop movements and people being killed and the walls being breached. It’s a way of keeping the action moving extremely quickly.

Those Lannister armies were totally decimated at Casterly Rock, and all the Highgarden people were wiped out. Everybody’s being wiped out, and there’s going to be nobody left to fight the army of the dead. They’re decimating each other, and it’s going to come back to haunt them.

Laura: All the Lannisters at Casterly Rock are dead. But then we see there’s maybe ten times as many that have marched to Highgarden. I think there are still a lot of Lannisters. But the Tyrells are wiped out.

Cheryl: A lot of the Unsullied were killed, of course.

Roz: The Greyjoys are fractured; Dorne is leaderless …

Laura: And the Tullys – Catelyn’s family – they got wiped out, too.

Roz: Yeah, that’s how the Freys took power.

So all these great houses gone or diminished. That lends urgency to what Jon is doing all of a sudden in the south.

I kept thinking, why isn’t he all, “Oh cool, flowers and green stuff!” I would be a lot more excited to go southl, if I were him.

Cheryl: What did you think of the interaction between Jon and Daenerys?

Laura: Its almost as if he had been at the Wall for so long that he’d forgotten all his courtly manners or didn’t give a shit. It didn’t seem to be pride; maybe he just wanted to express urgency. He seemed so canny when he was talking to the Northmen, so politically savvy.

Roz: I think he was just single-minded. I also think the South and the North must seem practically imaginary to those who never have any reason to go one place or another.

I had to laugh at loud at the contrast between Missandei and Davos.

Laura: That was hilarious. “This is Jon. He’s King in the North. The End.”

Roz: And Tyrion is in there, still trying to be a matchmaker. Between dragonglass and armies and certain doom. You know. Like you do.

But his advice was really good: Human minds can’t comprehend problems so large, so you have to make an “ask” that’s more concrete and more reasonable.

Cheryl: Jon refused to bend the knee. Tyrion did a good job of managing expectations between those two. However, Tyrion’s fucking up, right? His plans for Casterly Rock, however devious, were wrong. And the same thing happened with Dorne and the Iron Fleet. So he’s not making good decisions. As wise as they may seem, they’re not correct.

Laura: There’s Lannisters on two sides, on two different armies. And there are also Greyjoys on two different armies. So I think that’s the problem: they know each others’ tactics. To go back to the chess metaphor, since everything’s moving so quickly across the board: they end up in a stalemate. Euron could guess what Yara was going to do, so he cut off her fleet and attacked them; and Jaime, unfortunately, guessed what Tyrion was going to do.

Cheryl: Jaime is easy to underestimate.

Roz: Yeah, he’s been moping around for way too long. His scene at the end with Olenna was interesting because I increasingly read in his face that he’s simply accepting his doom – except that Jaime’s “doom” is to love Cersei. In earlier seasons, we see hints of him trying to be respected or trying to be seen as honorable. But when he’s talking to Olenna , he just look sort of like, “fuck it, I’ve lost that battle, this is the way I am.” He can just never win. And she wins even when she’s dying and her house is sacked.

Speaking of that scene: she’s essentially clearing Tyrion’s name, and Sansa’s, for the murder of Joffrey.

Cheryl: Is he going to relay that information back to Cersei?

So many people would have impulsively pulled out a knife when they heard the news that Olenna spit out and stabbed her with it. He didn’t do that. He had committed to allowing her to die in a respectful way, with poison, and he didn’t give in to his base instinct there.

Laura: Cersei’s only planning is how she will kill so-and-so. Psychological warfare.

Roz: Cheryl, you mentioned Sam’s father in this episode. That’s another thing about Jaime: we saw that glimpse of Randyll Tarly wearing the Lannister crimson and gold, so Jaime has actually been successful in forging that alliance and keeping those bannermen from breaking off.

Cheryl: He’s actually making a cohesive unit out of these disparate pieces. Nobody’s got any great love for Cersei, obviously, and somehow he’s able to keep the troops together.

Laura: The only speech Cersei gave was “we have to make sure not to let all these eunuchs and brown people take over.” It’s not just psychological warfare, it’s xenophobia and propaganda. And Jaime is growing into a real general. The two are scarier than we gave them credit for. Yeah, she’s spending a lot of her own energy having sex with her brother and plotting creative ways to kill their enemies, but she’s also getting shit done.

Cheryl: What did you think about the fact that after their sexual encounter and somebody knocks at the door, Cersei says she’s the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and doesn’t care who sees anymore? Somehow that felt like a turning point to me. Talk about doom. The path of doom is sealed now with that, somehow.

Roz: That was the secret that caused Ned Stark to lose his head at the beginning, and she’s very blasé about it now.

Side note: her handmaiden comes in rocking a short haircut. Clearly Cersei’s setting some new fashions in King’s Landing. We have not seen that before. Remember Margaery and all her ladies?

Laura: Very feminine, very racy.

Cheryl: Certainly Margaery was much more feminine, and her style and her outfits were softer. Cersei is martial now, with dark colors and a black-garbed handmaiden.

Laura: Everyone’s wearing black this season. Sansa, Daenerys … batten down the hatches! Dany used to wear bright blue sometimes, and Sansa used to wear color once in a while. But now winter’s here.

Cheryl: Right, they’re going into war mode. Speaking of which, Jon feels almost like he’s drowning in that … thing he’s wearing. Like a burden, almost ready to swallow him up. The burden of governing?

Roz: I had the same thought. I had to laugh in the scene with him and Dany gazing out off a cliff. Up North, on the Wall, in Winterfell, yeah, ok: they’re wearing a lot of fur. It’s cold. But he looked sort of like a barbarian or bumpkin at Dragonstone. Which has got to be intentional.

Cheryl: Speaking of Sansa, what about her interaction up in Winterfell with Littlefinger? “You just have to imagine what you want, imagine all the possible realities, and you’re prepared for anything” (I’m paraphrasing). Then she and Bran have a reunion, and he says he can see all past, present, and future, and that he’s seen the wedding that Littlefinger arranged. And it freaks her out. Or it seems to me. She’s thinking her brother sounds like Littlefinger. What do you guys think?

Laura: This is when I turned to my husband and said, “Oh my god, there are no more Starks.” Sansa has been a Bolton, she’s been a Lannister … and Bran is lost to humanity.

Roz: That is very clear in this episode. He’s been changed. The parallel with Littlefinger’s and Bran’s speeches one right after another was odd. One was very mundane, and the other was very otherworldly, yet they said basically the same thing.

Cheryl: And it was at that tree where she married Ramsay, with the snow as coming down, as in that scene … Sansa looked rattled by Bran recounting that.

Roz: It is sad. The emotional center of the show started out with the Stark family, the Stark children. And we have this mega-reunion, but Bran is changed into the Three-Eyed Raven. So she’s thrown off balance. In the meantime, while he’s talking about visions and the sights he’s seen and the past and the future, she’s worrying about grain stores and the armory and banter with Littlefinger.

Cheryl: Very worldly as opposed to otherworldly. Last week we talked about the theme of transformation and alchemical change. That carries through with Bran but also with Jorah, who’s transformed with the help of Sam.

Roz: It’s not like Jorah and Sam are crowd favorites as the cast goes, but I really liked the last two little scenes with them in the last episodes. Sam is very brave – and he is a self-admitted coward – crossing his boss, going through that grisly treatment. Jorah, who’s been this outcast and exile, is saved by his family name after all.

Cheryl: One last thing: both of you talked about vengeance and the women coming to terms with that. I think about the Hound, two episodes ago: how he was burying the people that he had left to die. He was coming to terms with his cruel acts, and that’s not a process the women have had to deal with, yet. They have had to do shitty things, but how are they going to process it as people? They haven’t had to do that.

Roz: No one else has really made atonement, it seems like.

The title of this episode was “The Queen’s Justice,” and there are obvious scenes with Cersei’s “justice” and with Dany being a ruler. But also Jorah credited Dany with saving his life, and that is another outcome of the Queen’s justice. In the process of exiling him, she told him to save himself, and he did.

Laura: I’m also interested in the idea of justice belonging to someone. Especially, as we said earlier, the character who seems most invested in it is Arya. She’s almost like an avenging angel, a force of nature.

I’m trying to figure out what to make of the fact that they are hiding Jon’s resurrection. “Don’t bring up the knife-to-the-heart thing!”

Roz: Well: “ARMY OF THE DEAD AND BY THE WAY I WAS ALSO DEAD.” His death kind of undermines his credibility even more, but it also means they’re beholden to Melisandre, too, and I’m not sure they’re ready to feel that way.

Laura: In the chamber they name all the things Dany has done: Dany survived the fire, she’s Unburnt. And Jon doesn’t care.

If I were in charge of moving these chess pieces around, I’d say this information should slip out. Dany clearly got a hint of Jon’s knife attack as meaning something, and Tyrion brushed it off. That was a fuck-up.

Roz: So we finally had the meeting of fire and ice. They’ve both survived, come back.

Cheryl: That also happened to Arya, when she miraculously survived numerous times last season. At least I considered them miraculous. Would you consider that Bran as a character who has miraculously survived?

Roz: He’s certainly been transformed.

Laura: Interestingly, he’s the most supernatural character, but he was literally saved by Hodor’s body.

Roz: Bran died in another body.

Cheryl: So he has been resurrected as something different. He’s had his own transformation into something we can’t fathom.

Roz: What you’re saying makes me think of ice and fire, the magical and the mundane. It seems like this show is about things coming into balance, and we’re seeing that happen on all these different levels this season.

Cheryl: The balance between the mundane and the otherworldly?

Roz: I think so, or even things such as the paths we choose. Choosing vengeance or not. The different outcomes that are possible from the circumstances we find ourselves in. You have to have some blend between being hard and soft. Don’t die, like Ned! But don’t be evil, like Cersei!

Cheryl: Jon does not want to be worshipped. His true character is being revealed. He doesn’t want to be regarded as some magical being who has returned from the dead. Maybe Dany doesn’t either. She actually feels she has a mission. Their characters are being revealed through these tests, obviously, and Cersei is being boiled down to her true essence as well.

Roz: We did see that Theon is still around.

Laura: I randomly remembered that we saw Bronn for half a second. If people are still showing up, they’ve still got to have some kind of role to play.

Cheryl: There was also a specific pregnant pause after a line about how there was nobody left to rule, and I thought, “Oh, this is where Gendry’s gonna walk in.” We know Gendry’s going to show up simply because someone took a picture of him in an airport in Dublin. Wouldn’t that be hilarious if everybody dies and he gets the throne?

Squawks

Laura: I wonder how much of this season will tease out “innate” character traits. If Arya has so changed yet is still similar to who she always was, will others follow suit?

Like this:

Welcome friends! The breathtaking pace of Season 7 has left us gasping for breath and generally a bit discombobulated. Are you feeling the same way?

We are using that as our pretext for our late season start, anyway. That and some technical issues in the ravenry.

Join three fans with different perspectives as we catapult forward and think about “Dragonstone” and “Stormborn.” Rosalyn Claret, who has read the books yet says she “forgets” how many times; Laura Fletcher, a casual fan of the television and book series; and Cheryl Collins, who does not read.

How did it feel to plunge back into the world of Westeros as the show begins to wind down?

Roz: I was super psyched to get back into it. It was a comforting episode for me. It wasn’t super challenging, and it had some crowd-pleasing moments. It was fairly predictable, but I was happy to pick up with some of the characters.

Laura: Cheryl, you mentioned you thought the first episode was kind of disappointing?

Cheryl: I felt like the pieces are being put into place much more quickly than in the past. We’re at a Mexican telenovela pace! It was nice to see the characters, but I didn’t feel stimulated; I wasn’t intrigued. It seems like we’re rushing through plot points and there wasn’t a lot of character development.

Roz: The change in pace was very jarring to me, for both episodes. It’s definitely an adjustment.

Cheryl: The best part for me was the “prequel,” which was very well done. The way that the last episodes of last season were set up seemed to be a focus on the siblings: Sansa and Jon, Jaime and Cersei, Theon and Yara. And the winds were shifting.

Laura: Like Roz, I was psyched to get more episodes, even though it was essentially table setting: “Here’s where everyone is.” They’re obsessed with showing maps this season: Dany at Dragonstone, and Jon with his map out, and Cersei commissioning that beautiful map on the ground. So I get it, they have to keep reminding us of where everyone is, because it’s going to matter. But they were hitting you over the head with it.

Obviously you got the big Arya revenge scene at the opening, and you also got back to her fun face trick. It was good fan service. It was satisfying TV.

I am intrigued by how they’re setting up Jon Snow. We know he left the Night’s Watch — he got off on a technicality! So they’re setting him up as a reluctant leader, which seems like a good thing. That’s another theme that I’m seeing a lot. Daenerys is like “I was born to do this, I was born to do all these things,” but she’s not coming to conquer for the sake of conquering, she really does want to lead the people. And Jon doesn’t really want to lead the people. There’s some parallels there that they’re setting up for a good reason. Neither Jon nor Daenerys know they’re related. She’s technically his aunt.

This show is notorious for doing whatever the hell it wants with timing. I thought it was interesting that they bothered to point out, for example, the order in which Jon Snow got those ravens. Didn’t Sam send him a raven? Where the fuck is that raven? “Ok, I just got it, and two days ago I received another one.” It is very telenovela.

Roz: My take on the premiere was “unsubtle.” I enjoyed the lack of subtlety sometimes, like with the cheering-Arya-on part at the beginning — which was just closing the biggest plot upset in the show and the book, bringing that full circle — so that had to happen. But I found the rest of the dialogue and the parallels they were setting up really heavy handed.

In particular, I didn’t buy it when Sansa tells Jon, “You don’t know Cersei. She’s going to come for us, she’ll destroy and murder everyone.” Jon says, “You sound like you admire it,” and she says, “I learned a great deal from Cersei.” That seems so out of character to me. It served the plot and some of the parallels they’re trying to draw, and again hitting us over the head that Sansa’s maturing and coming into her own. But there were a couple lines like that, that just sort of thudded for me. It sounded more like plot than like a character speaking.

Cheryl: And her sister Arya is going down to kill Cersei. Maybe this is a good segue to the second episode. It reminded me of the rules of the Faceless Men: they’re not supposed to be driven by vengeance, right? Yet Arya was using her skills for that purpose.

Laura: I guess my take on Sansa’s line is that she was trying to be kind of wry and sarcastic, but she didn’t really sell it. I think she was trying to say that she’s learned how evil people can be. She didn’t mean that she has learned a lot.

On Sansa’s relationship with Littlefinger: she keeps saying “I know exactly what he wants.” Well then tell me, because I don’t understand! He doesn’t just want her physically and he doesn’t just want to be in charge: he wants something nefarious, and I feel like the show keeps doing wink-nod things with that, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to get out of it. Unless it’s that whole “ladder of power” speech from an earlier season.

But we did get a good contrast with him and Varys in the second episode, when Varys was talking with Daenerys, so maybe we can come back to that.

Cheryl: I also remember from two seasons ago that Littlefinger made a pact with Cersei to be Warden of the North. I keep wondering if that’s going to rear its head.

Roz: Littlefinger is just an untrustworthy asshole. I’m tired of all the shots of him lurking against the wall in council chambers!

His dynamic with Sansa is interesting. It’s recognizable to me. I don’t think she likes him, she doesn’t trust him, but they’re sort of bonded now because they’ve spent so much time together. He’s the only person who has witnessed half of what has happened to her. Yeah, he missed out conveniently on the worst trauma when she was with the Boltons. I feel like she would rather not be connected to him, and yet is. She recognizes that he’s been trying to use her, and she’s maturing into playing that game as well; but she’s bitter, and she’s angry. It’s an interesting dynamic.

Cheryl: The fact that they can’t get rid of Littlefinger is reflective of the fact that the North has emptied out. The whole of Westeros has emptied out. The show keeps referring to this visually. When Cersei’s talking to her court, there’s almost nobody there anymore; in Winterfell, kids are being trained to shoot arrows. The North needs the Knights of the Vale because they need warm bodies, and we’re told this repeatedly. So strange bedfellows are created.

I remember feeling last season that Sansa is going to be queen, and this is her court now. That seems to be what’s happening now.

Let’s talk about the scene with Arya and Nymeria. Or, the not-real Nymeria. Or the Unclear Whether It Was Nymeria.

Laura: By the way Maisie Williams delivered that line — “That’s not you” — it’s clear she meant something. I just don’t understand what.

Cheryl: I assumed that it was not Nymeria.

Roz: The “Behind the Episode” mini-feature afterward talks about that scene. What they said it means was not how I interpreted it. I thought their explanation was pretty tortured, actually.

They said it was a throwback to one of the early episodes in Season 1. Ned is still alive. He sits Arya down and he’s telling her: when you grow up, you have a place, a role to play as the daughter of a noble house, you’ll marry a lord, and you’ll carry on. He’s trying to make her feel more comfortable with her lot. But she just looks at him and says, “That’s not me.” And she walks away. So the showrunners said that scene is what they were directly channeling.

Nymeria’s been running wild and has formed her own life. Arya’s also been running wild. Arya was able to articulate early on when she was a little girl “that’s not me,” and she recognizes the same impulse in her wolf, supposedly: “That’s not for you. That’s not you. That just doesn’t fit you, to go home and be a companion again when you’ve built your pack in this wild woods.”

I don’t see how anybody could have ever grasped that, in that moment. Yet that scene was so resonant, and the actress did a great job, so I had many thoughts about it … but none of those thoughts were the showrunners’ explanation.

Laura: There did seem to be a connection between the two of them, and I couldn’t figure out why Nymeria walked away.

I felt like Nymeria was disappointed with her. I felt it was like a judgment of what Arya was doing. And I was trying to unpack that.

Roz: I had some similar thoughts, Laura. I did think it was Nymeria, because how many direwolves are there in the woods — who will also recognize Arya, who have also been established to be running with a wolf pack? So it was interesting the way it set up: this could potentially be another super crowd-pleasing, fist-pumping, cheering-Arya-on moment that could also close a loop that was laid in the first episode when they all get their direwolves. We’ve been wanting this reunion, especially since Nymeria was involved in one of the first rifts between the Lannisters and the Starks, causing Arya to send the wolf away.

So it’s all set up for the reunion to be wonderful and emotional, and you see that on Maisie Williams’ face. When Nymeria turns away, I thought Arya was going to break down finally — being offered something so close to home and Winterfell and being deprived of it — and then she steels herself against it, and says: “That’s not you.”

I took it really literally, but in a different way. Nymeria is a mirror of Arya. They were supposed to have this supernatural bond. Nymeria can tell enough to not eat Arya for lunch, but beyond that . . . nothing. What should be a reunion, becoming whole again, is instead only half-recognition: Nymeria responds as if Arya is part friend, part stranger.

And so we wonder: who is Arya now? She’s been running wild for as long as Nymeria has. Arya gets this examining look from the wolf: Are you still someone I can recognize?

Cheryl: And there was no affection. Nymeria didn’t lick her. It links to that reunion with Hot Pie, when he says, “What’s happened to you?”

The process of transformation and alchemy is a big part of this show. Arya’s not what she was. Something has changed her. Like a stone into a sword, a metal that’s been forged into something else. And Hot Pie could recognize that.

However, she was still pulled by the familiar bond back to Winterfell.

Roz: That struck me as really significant too, Cheryl. That scene with Hot Pie and her silence really hit me. “What’s happened to you?” She can’t even say. She doesn’t even know.

Then she turns her horse back to Winterfell. For me, that’s part of Arya’s overarching arc, which is: where’s her humanity? Her quest for revenge has turned her into this really strange tool. Ostensibly it’s still motivated by personal and familial reasons, and remember, Jon was her favorite sibling so it’s no wonder she’s unable to resist heading north — but does she know where home is? What’s happened to her?

The question of whether she still has a human soul has risen in my mind. She’s the show’s only true “lone wolf” operator — everyone else is ensnared in plots or rallying allies and armies — but when she turns her horse back to Winterfell we see she’s not this too-far-gone vengeance machine. It really seems like a turning point.

Cheryl: Right. Especially since so much for her was about vengeance. At the end of the first episode, Sansa talked about the great Houses that were occupied by people who betrayed them and that they should be cast out. It seemed much harsher, while Jon was the much softer, almost beneficent leader. He was not interested in vengeance.

Connecting what you are saying Roz to what happened to Theon in the battle with Euron: we’re reminded about the question of his nature and his transformation. His old conditioning and training resurfaced at the worst possible moment.

Sansa has been married against her will twice, and even though she was born a Stark, that’s not how it works for women in the family. You grow up, you marry a lord, and you become something else. Her mother wasn’t originally a Stark, her mother was a Tully.

In Arya, we’ve got the complications of the Faceless Men, where she was literally told to forget who she was.

Jon has just never been a Stark, because he’s a bastard. As we’re soon to learn, his only Stark blood is through his mother anyway, which because its matrilineal doesn’t count.

So again, none of them are Starks! I’m hung up on what the fuck that means.

Cheryl: There’s no there there. There’s an empty hole in the center of Winterfell and the negative space is being filled in by what’s left around it: by the women, the children, and Jon.

And Melisandre shows up in Dragonstone.

Roz: The meeting between Dany and Jon is basically what I’ve always thought of as the entire point of the series, and yet I don’t trust Melisandre as the messenger. What’s she up to?

Laura: She’s there to remind them that there’s this prophecy. Oh, did we mention? It could be a prince or a princess?

And it gave her a reason to write to Jon Snow. She seems like just a convenient person to hook the two up.

Roz: It was an “lol” moment about Missandei as the translator in that scene. She’s just been standing in the scenery for multiple episodes and all of a sudden: Translator Moment!

Cheryl: It was about something crucial, too. The person in the prophecy could be male or female.

I thought it was interesting that Melisandre looked much less red. She didn’t have that bright red lipstick. She looked more chastened to me, more modest, less flamboyant. I don’t know if it’s because of what’s happened to her — that she got cast out of the North and Stannis’s death — but she seemed to have toned it all down a bit.

Roz: Throughout the episode, it was very jarring to have so many major players at the same place at the same time. The shift in pacing was startling. It’s fun, but it’s been so drawn out for so long, it’s a little hard to adjust to.

Laura: Like at Dragonstone, when all Daenerys’s allies are talking in the war room.

Cheryl: One coupling that happened was between Grey Worm and Missandei. I put my hand over my face because I found it painful to watch.

Laura: I don’t know if there was any purpose for that scene. I’m glad they’re giving the characters something to do. It wasn’t a coincidence that Missandei managed to actually translate something, for once.

The only thematic thing I think might matter from that is that there’s so little romance in this show. None right now. Is this the one love there is, except maybe Jorah for Daenerys, which is clearly one-sided?

Roz: Grey Worm and Missandei’s scene was not a particularly significant plot point, but they’ve built those characters out in the show more than they have in the book. It made sense in terms of how long they’ve been teasing it.

I thought it was really well acted. I also thought they’ve already made several excuses to have that actress take off her clothes (or her body double), and so they did that again.

At the same time, Grey Worm is this cipher of a character who I think has been acted nicely. And it was a really painful emotional moment, too, clearly, which I thought was displayed well.

Cheryl: Those close-ups on his eyes. He was so afraid of how she was going to respond. They did that part well.

Roz: You want them to be happy, as much as they can be. His explanation of her being a weakness was true to form for someone who’s not speaking his first language and who was raised in this extreme way.

I’m not enough of a cinema buff to really have an angle on it, but I was wondering what they were going to do, in this show of all shows, with a sex scene involving someone who’s been castrated. And interestingly, they focus on Missandei’s face and by extension even on her pleasure.

Laura: Not to sound like a feminist scold (but I am, so whatever): so much of the nudity and sex in this show has been very male-gazey. Right? Male fantasies, looking through holes at whores and whacking off. So this is definitely a reversal of that. I wonder how much of it is conscious choice by the showrunners to do something different because they’ve been hung out to dry about this stuff.

Also, there was gratuitous lesbian kiss, which was literally interrupted because we can’t actually have women making out for pleasure, but we can have them making out if men are watching!

Roz: That’s why I was distressed by this episode (as much as I am annoyed by the Sand Snakes and now they’re out of the picture). We’ve waited so long to get all these characters in the same place, and get all the characters firmly established. I wanted to see them actually interact with each other a little more! Instead, Yara and Ellaria start flirting, and then WHOOPS EVERYBODY DIES or is captured.

Cheryl: Going back to the thing with Missandei’s pleasure: first of all, I thought that sex scene was way too long.

Roz: It was very long.

Cheryl: The thing about the focus on her pleasure seemed to be reflective of the whole episode, which was women’s empowerment, women ruling, women being in control, and the men serving the women.

That small, short, annoying interaction with the Sand Snakes: it’s almost like they had to write them in the most annoying way possible so we were happy when they died.

And when Ellaria was at the map table at Dragonstone, we see she’s still so pissed off at the Lannisters and at Tyrion, she still wants to kill them and take them down. She’s still consumed with her rage. I thought, that means she’s going to die soon, perhaps her vengeance consumed her and will kill both her and the Sand Snakes off.

Laura: I agree that they just brought the Sand Snakes back so we could kill them off and it would be satisfying.

Roz: Another interesting thing about that war room at Dragonstone: the episode began with Daenerys and Varys: her sizing him up — showing that flattery isn’t gonna work, making it clear that Varys better toe the line — and Tyrion watching it all unfold. Basically the episode starts with Dany trying to signal to this newcomer that his typical ways with other leaders won’t work with her. She faces him down when he starts into his usual tricks.

Later, I wondered what’s the difference between advice received from Varys and Olenna? Here Dany lays out her whole plan with Tyrion, gets everyone to agree. It should be a win. And then Olenna calls her aside afterward and says: “No, don’t do it.” Why is Dany prepared to listen to her more than to Varys, at that point? Rather than just continuing to emphasize that she’s in charge. What is the difference between the advice she decided to accept and reject?

Cheryl: She did take Tyrion’s advice, in that they’re going to Casterly Rock.

Roz: It was pretty clever. Tyrion’s smart. He totally had Cersei pinned down with the Lannister appeal to ethnocentricity. That was an essential part of his plan, predicting that. Dany got everyone to agree. Things are good, right? But what does it mean: “Be a dragon and ignore all that?”

Cheryl: Ignore what the men say.

Roz: What about Theon’s scene?

Laura: Poor Theon. Over and over again.

Roz: In my mind, what triggered Theon and set him off was not so much the fighting. He was swinging his sword around earlier on! I think it was more Euron’s sadism. The games he was playing more than just the violence and the fighting.

Ramsay used to make people believe that they might escape, to goad them into action. I thought that Euron was going to goad him into action and then kill his sister. I wondered if Theon recognized that on some level, and in jumping overboard, he opted out — and managed to save her, intentionally or not. Just sensing the game and thinking, “FUCK. I cannot win this! He’s just gonna kill her for fun, if he thinks it’ll hurt me.”

Cheryl: That’s a really excellent point, Roz. The look on Yara’s face was, “You’re weak.” She did not perceive this point of Theon’s choice. Because Euron was channeling Ramsay. Theon really did realize there’s no way to win this.

Also in this episode: When leaders were trying to bring people together, they all talked about how their enemies are different. Dany did this. Cersei spoke of the bad queen, the daughter of the mad king, coming with the Dothraki hordes: that they’re very different from us. “We have to stand together.”

There was that ethnocentrism you mentioned. Up in Winterfell, this came up too: “those southerners are different from us.” Jon stressed that we have to stand together, especially when they’re going to fight the advancing hordes of the dead.

Roz: Jaime was backing up Cersei in that, too. Cersei had made her attempt at inspiring people. She had a tough crowd, and it’s not really her strong point. We’ve seen a lot of inspirational leader speeches; hers did not seem great. It was funny because Jaime sort of ended up in this de facto Hand of the Queen role — rushing to try and do what she didn’t, securing Tarly’s loyalty. He doesn’t seem very comfortable with it all either, but that’s still how he made his point, that foreign people are coming.

Cheryl: What about Jorah and Sam?

Laura: That was really fun! Of all the character meetings that I wasn’t expecting, that was a good one. It was gratuitously gross. (Why does Sam keeps getting the gratuitously gross scenes? Bless his heart.) If they’re bothering to show him at this point, something is up.

Cheryl: When Jon decides to leave Winterfell, there were many shots between Brienne, Sansa, and Lady Mormont exchanging looks. This made me wonder how Lady Mormont and Jorah are going to fit in together, if they will.

Laura: I want to see Sansa become Queen of the North when Jon’s gone. That’ll be interesting.

Cheryl: And of course Jon will not bend the knee, so I’m interested to see how that plays out.

Roz: In fact, three different people made a point of reading and interpreting Tyrion’s message differently. Aaand, he didn’t seem to include the “bend the knee” part! I wonder if it’s because he knew what would get Jon Snow to Dragonstone, and just assumed that Jon would be captivated by Dany regardless — as he has just watched happen with Varys, as he has been himself.

Cheryl: I had the same thought. Tyrion was very diplomatic in that message. It didn’t send an imperious dictum. It was something softer. It’ll be interesting to see how they interact.

Squawks

Roz:

Did you catch the little GRRM meta-joke when the Archmaester is in the library with Sam? The Archmaester says he’s writing a history of all the events following Robert’s Rebellion (that is: the entire book/show to date) and offers up an extremely wordy working title. Sam suggests something more “poetic.” Like, oh, maybe … “A Song of Ice and Fire”? Eh? Eh?

Woohoo, Jon punches Littlefinger and it is rather satisfying. But throughout this interaction I kept thinking about what a very Ned Stark-y moment it was for Jon (even aside from the looming Eddard effigy presiding over the scene). Jon literally says “You don’t belong down here” and tries to walk away as Littlefinger tries to draw him into his schemes. Well, Ned also tried to just walk away from the game or opt out with honor. As Sansa recently reminded us, the Stark children have got to be smarter than that to survive.